Where a truck is utilized in an agricultural setting, it is desirable that the truck be capable of performing multiple functions or tasks. For example, it is common for such trucks to be equipped with fixtures adapting the forward bumper for attachment of a snow or dirt moving blade. As another example, agricultural trucks are commonly equipped with a fifth wheel trailer hitch or a rear bumper trailer hitch enabling the truck to pull various carts and trailers. As a further example, a common adaptation of an agricultural truck allows its load bearing bed to upwardly pivot, allowing the truck to function as a dump truck. Typically, hydraulic rams are installed within the bed supporting frames of such trucks, such rams providing the motive force for alternately inclining and leveling the truck's load bearing bed. Another common adaptation of an agricultural truck includes hydraulically powered bale lifting arms for conveniently raising large hay bales onto the truck bed and for off loading hay bales therefrom. Examples of such adaptation are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,594,041 issued Jun. 10, 1986, to Hostetler; U.S. Pat. No. 4,564,325 issued Jan. 14, 1986, to Ackerman; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,044,963 issued Aug. 30, 1977, to Hostetler. As with common dump bed adaptations, adaptations of agricultural trucks for bale lifting typically incorporate hydraulic rams to provide the motive force for bale lifting.
While it is desirable that an agricultural truck be dually capable of functioning as a dump truck and as a bale lifter, a farm truck operator may hesitate to equip the truck to perform both functions due to the mechanical complexity of equipping the truck both with a set of bed lifting rams and a set of bale lifting rams, and due to the expense of installing duplicate sets of rams. The instant inventive bale lifting and load dumping apparatus solves the above described problems of mechanical complexity and additional expense by providing apparatus allowing a single set of hydraulic rams to alternately perform a truck bed inclining function and a bale lifting function.